What We Can Learn About Marriage From the French

“Everyone from the checkout clerk at Trader’s Joe to your great-aunt to Oscar-winning celebrities likes tell you that marriage is hard, but no one tells you how it is hard or what to do about it,” says Jo Piazza. It was that quandary—and her own first year of marriage—that compelled Piazza to ask hundreds of people from places as varied as Chile, Kenya, Denmark, India, and France about what exactly it takes to make a marriage work.

“We aren’t set up for success here,” says Piazza of the United States. “Too many of us move far away from our families, communities, and support system, which puts an awful lot of pressure on a spouse to be one person’s absolute everything.” Combine that with our collective obsessions with our jobs, our addictions to our phones, and the overall lack of work-life balance in American life (not to mention the lack of affordable child care and dismal maternity leave policies!), and no wonder so many of us have trouble maintaining healthy relationships—let alone our health and sanity. As Piazza says: “Knowing you have health care and paid time off [like our counterparts in Northern Europe] makes a huge difference. Equality is deeply ingrained in their cultures and it feels like much less of a struggle to find a balance. . . and puts less pressure on a marriage to be a certain way.”

Still, that’s not to say there’s one magical place in the world where everyone is experiencing perfect matrimonial bliss—which is precisely why Piazza’s book is so helpful. It’s the collective learnings from each place—the sum of the wisdom culled from the cultures explored in each chapter that makes for such an inspiring read. “I started this book believing that somewhere, someone has figured out the secret to the perfect marriage. Now I know that everyone, no matter how good their relationship, struggles to make it work,” Piazza explains. “A happy and successful marriage requires effort every day.”

Below, a snapshot of Piazza’s wildly engrossing chapter on France, and what can be gleaned from the women she interviewed there—which, spoiler alert, has a lot to do with (what else?), seduction and sex. “I think about their advice a lot,” Piazza admits. “I consciously wonder if I am putting in enough effort. I didn't really think about some of these things until I talked to the somewhat terrifying French ladies about it.”

France

Infidelity is overrated. Be your husband's mistress instead.

As Piazza points out in her book, only 47 percent of French say infidelity is unacceptable in a marriage, compared to 84 percent of Americans. Still, that doesn’t necessarily mean French women are as tolerant to affairs as we’ve been lead to think. “That is a silly cliche you American believe,” one of the writer’s French friends tells her before clarifying “I don’t mind if my president has sex with other women, that’s not my problem… of course, I hope my man doesn’t do that to me.” Instead, the French believe in working to keep each other interested so that neither person wants to have an affair in the first place. “It’s work. He still needs to conquer me every day and I need to make him want me every day. I need to put in the effort—and here’s what’s important: I want to do the work,” Piazza’s friend says. As another friend puts it: “No one wants to be cheated on. No one wants to see their man with another woman… You behave like his mistress and it is less likely to happen.”

You have to make yourself happy.

“American women think that they need a man to fulfill them,” one French woman explains. “We [French women] fulfill ourselves and then we find a man to come along and be part of our journey.” Not only do the French maintain independence within relationships, they insist on making sure their partner knows they are confident with themselves. “None of the whining ‘Ooohhhhh I look fat in this dress…I look old!’ He will believe what you tell him to believe about you. You tell him you feel beautiful and thin and young and sexy and that is what he will think of you.” Put more simply: “The more you love yourself, the more your husband will love you.”

If you’re boring, your relationship will be boring.

According to the French women Piazza interviewed, avoiding the mundane is another key to keeping the romance alive. That means eliminating small talk whenever possible and being present. “When you go out to dinner put down your damn phone and don’t talk about work or the laundry or the broken toilet. Would a man talk about a broken toilet with his mistress?” one French woman says. “Speak about things that are interesting, and leave the nagging to his coworkers,” another recommends. “Don’t pick small fights; don’t speak of small things. And above else, never be boring.”

Ever notice how French men look at their wives? “Even after years of marriage, having babies, losing jobs… husbands still gaze at their wives with an intense mixture of passion and curiosity,” Piazza writes. The trick, many French say, is to stay mysterious. “Stop peeing with the door open. Keep some things private!” one woman exclaims, while yet another recommends flirting with your husband—as well as with other men. “You Americans are such prudes about flirting. It releases some of the tension and men think its sexy to see that another man wants their wife,” explains one. Another puts it more bluntly: “Look at [your husband] like you want to fuck him.”

Never underestimate the importance of lingerie.

Lingerie is an integral part of a happy relationship in France. “Lingerie—beautiful things worn under a woman’s clothing—should be something shared between a man and his wife,” Poupie Cadolle, the CEO of one of France’s oldest lingerie companies, explains to Piazza. “For a French woman, a beautiful set of underwear is part of her personality. She does not save it for a special occasion. She wears it because she wants to feel beautiful every day. American women wear underwear like a uniform.” And though many may find the following advice old-fashioned or anti-feminist, Cadolle also says that a women should let her man pick her lingerie. “American women do not understand this. They would never bring their husbands with them into the shop and ask them what they like. In France we care what our husband likes. We have a confident relationship with what our husband likes. We let him come and see and choose. And then… we let him pay. French husbands always pay.”